US CONFIRMS DELIVERY OF JAVELIN ANTI-TANK MISSILES TO UKRAINE

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The US State Department has confirmed the delivery of anti-tank missile systems Javelin to Ukraine.

“They have already been delivered,” a US State Department official said on April 30 in response to an RFE/RL query on the handover of Javelins.

In March, the US confirmed the deal to sell 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 Javelin launchers to Ukraine. According to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the deal also includes “United States Government and contractor technical assistance, transportation, training and other related elements of logistics and program support”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also confirmed the delivery and said his country would continue “to strengthen” its “defense potential.”

“I am sincerely grateful for the fair decision of [U.S. President] Donald Trump in support of Ukraine, in defense of freedom and democracy,” Poroshenko said.

“Washington not only fulfilled our joint agreement, it demonstrated leadership and an important example.”

Ukrainian Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak thanked Poroshenko and wrote on his Facebook page that Ukrainian troops would begin training with the new weapons on May 2.

Further details of the delivery have not been provided yet.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovak Group (CSG), a private defensive and industrial company, secured a contract to deliver refurbished Russian-designed BVP-1 (BMP-1) amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and 2S1 amphibious tracked self-propelled howitzers (SPHs) to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the US Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on May 3.

“The contract was signed recently and is worth hundreds of millions of crowns and involves dozens of vehicle platforms,” the CSG spokesman Andrej Cirtek told Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Excalibur Army will completely overhaul the armoured vehicles and self-propelled howitzers at VOP 026 Sternberk and then transport them to our partner Wtorplast in Poland, which will export them to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine,” Cirtek added.

Moscow has repeatedly warned against supplies of weapons to Ukraine saying that this would result in the escalation of the military conflict in the country’s eastern Donbas region, ongoing since 2014.

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